


numbers

by nerdesque



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 03:48:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12313176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdesque/pseuds/nerdesque
Summary: time makes us sentimental. perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer.





	numbers

We played the game of numbers.

We stayed up until four in the morning, tracing old scars and with each touch rewinding the clocks and recalling when the wound was fresh. You cried in my arms when you told me about your sister. I had never felt so empty before.

It was in the 55th minute that you fell to the ground in a beaten heap. You clutched your leg and the stadium suddenly fell silent around us. You didn’t say my name, or any name when you cried out, but I knew that you needed me; if not as a friend, or an almost-lover, at least as someone who shared your past. As someone who shared your pain. I asked you how badly it hurt and tried not to notice as you bit your lips until they swelled under the pressure. You gripped my fingers, and through gritted teeth, you told me "seven". A swarm of black polos engulfed you and I felt completely and irreversibly helpless. You dropped my hand. I didn’t want to let you go, even when the medics ushered me away. I watched as you limped off the field, the shiny black 5 on your back growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared into the dark of the tunnel. You didn’t look back.

It was day 4 of camp when you told me you loved me for the first time. I knew your eyes well enough to see the panic hidden there. I traced the lines of your face with the pad of my thumb, trying to remember every detail. I said that I loved you too. The words tumbled from my tongue onto yours, and in the hidden alcove of our shared hotel room, I swore that I would never let you go.

Twelve white roses awaited me on our kitchen table when the news of the trade came through. In your neatest print, you wrote: “ _Go fill the world with love, laughter, and pride_.  _All I am is yours_ ”. You were always able, through this small medium of soccer, to command your emotions, to summon love or pity or happiness at will, having provided a channel through which they might flow. You drove yourself forward mercilessly, and our summer of love proudly marched on.

It was only the second night of December when you wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and ushered me into your car. The engine roared to life and our breath billowed up into the air, fanning into a thin sheet against the roof. A few flakes of snow fell onto the windshield. You put your hand in mine and suddenly I wasn’t shivering anymore. Your lips were cold, but it still ignited that ancient ache that made your mouth curl into a smile when you tasted my hunger. I wish I knew how to calibrate a kiss the way you did; so fragile and ecstatic that I thought it may have been made of spun glass. Never falling or breaking, just stretching thinner and thinner on into infinity. In the front seat of your Jeep, with your hands in mine, you set my heaven ablaze.

Your one-hundredth cap. My hands turned red and raw from clapping so hard when you held up your jersey to the screaming crowd. Some heavenly support seemed to lift you by your shoulder blades, as if you secretly delighted in the ability to fly, only to walk on the ground as some sort of compromise. Our eyes met, mine brimming with proud tears, and you bowed your head to your cleats. The custom ones with the golden 13 sewn on the heels. One hundred games you played, and I was with you for every single step.

7,500 people watched me fall in love with you all over again on Facebook. You had never looked so beautiful as you threw your head back in a roaring laugh. The world was only ever wide enough for the two of us.

You died on a Tuesday. They said they did everything they could to keep you alive, that there was nothing else they could have done. They were wrong. The sun doesn't fall out of the sky without reason. You always had a reason. You always had _your_ reason.

It's funny how danger makes people so passionate. It's also funny how sharp a memory is when one has nothing else to live for.

We buried you on a Friday, and the blush that the mortician put on your cheeks was too coral for your skin. You would have hated it. I didn't cry, even as they lowered you into the ground. Your mother gripped my arm and I stood up a bit straighter. In that cold, bucolic shadow strewn across your shiny pine box, I met God. Death is the only real eloquence.

It was Saturday when I realized that Georgia was only beautiful when you were in it. I didn't sleep for the week I was here, the cicadas thrumming mechanically on the trunks of the palmetto trees as soon as the punishing sun kissed the horizon. A southern moon is a sodden moon, and sultry. When it swamps the fields and the rustling sandy roads and the sticky honeysuckle hedges in its sweet stagnation, your fight to hold on to reality is like trying to ward off drunkenness after the twelfth round. 

ESPN ran your segment the Sunday after, but none of us watched it. They talked about Stanford and Sky Blue and the Royals, but they could never talk about how your voice sounded in the morning when you drank your coffee too hot, or how fierce of a lover you were. How sweet the torture was of knowing and loving you, and having to replace a gentle  _goodnight_ with a bitter _goodbye_.

My love, I hope you did not die with regret. You never got your place on the mantle, never got to cement yourself in the annals of history or a hall of fame or in literature. You didn't see the rings I had picked out for us, or read the verses I wrote in your image. You never got to see our children, and find that their eyes and freckled skin matched yours perfectly. But more than any of that, you never got to see how sweet a symphony of numbers could sound. _13 and 5._

 


End file.
